More Proof that Pesticides are Having Detrimental Effects on Children

Natural Society
by Elisabeth Renter

A new study from the Pesticide Action Network says that the more than 1 billion pounds of pesticides used in the United States every year may be having detrimental effects on children’s health. While it may seem like a statement from Captain Obvious, the industry that makes these pesticides insists they are safe. Safe to have on our foods, in our air, and leeched into our water. And just as safe for children as they are for adults.

But, the Pesticide Action Network North America (PAANA) says, that simply isn’t the case. Their research, and research that has come before them, indicates these chemicals (used to kill things incidentally) are contributing to things like autism, birth defects, early puberty, obesity, cancer, diabetes, and asthma.

Researchers drew their conclusions from dozens of studies that linked pesticides with serious health concerns. These studies show that the effects of pesticides on children are even more pronounced than they are in adults. After all, everything is smaller and still developing in the young.

“One of the things that is also really clear from science is that children are just much more vulnerable to pesticide exposure,” said report co-author Kristin Schafer. “In terms of how their bodies work and defense mechanisms work, how much (pesticides) they’re taking in pound for pound, they’re eating more, drinking more, breathing more than an adult, and are much more susceptible to harms that pesticides can pose.”

For their part, the pesticide industry says these findings are simply untrue—that their chemicals are harmless for everyone, that they are tested for safety and wouldn’t be used if they weren’t safe. Of course, their vested interest in the continued belief of their chemicals safety wouldn’t be playing a role in their insistence, would it? Pesticide companies and companies like Monsanto, for instance, are notorious for funding studies that “prove” their safety—because truly objective studies would hurt their bottom line.

Related:  Brain tumour link to pesticides

7 Nasty and Crazy Effects of Pesticides in Food, Exposure

Natural Society
by Lisa Garber

When asked by a skeptical friend why you buy organic, do you find yourself tongue-tied? Was it obesity? Or thyroid problems? Why should you buy organic? There are numerous reasons to skip the mainstream supermarket food and shop at an organic grocer, but just one of those reasons revolves around the effects of pesticides.

Unfortunately, pesticides attack your body on several fronts. Keep this list handy the next time you find yourself wondering if you should buy a carton of conventional strawberries rather than organic to potentially save a few pennies. Remember that all of the following conditions will cost you much more than money; the effects of pesticides will cost you your health.

Here are 7 nasty and crazy effects of pesticides.

Effects of Pesticides – Cancer

The dreaded diagnosis of cancer has been linked in over 260 studies worldwide to agrochemicals. Worse, scientists have linked pesticides with several types of cancers, including that of the breast, prostate, brain, bone, thyroid, colon, liver, lung, and more. Some researchers from USC found that “those who lived within 500 meters of places where methyl bromide, captan and eight other organochlorine pesticides had been applied, they found, were more likely to have developed prostate cancer.”

But even indirect exposure, such as through parental use, has been found to affect children in a terrible way. A study published in Environmental Health Perspectives has linked parental use of pesticides with an increased risk of brain cancer in children. “Parental exposures may act before the child’s conception, during gestation, or after birth to increase the risk of cancer,” the study said. And when the parents are exposed to the pesticides may also play a role in the different cellular changes that lead to cancer.

Obesity and Diabetes

Because pesticides have also been linked to obesity, it’s logical that it would be connected to diabetes, in which obesity often has a role. Some researchers found a higher prevalence of obesity in the participants with high urinary concentrations of a pesticide known as 2,5-dichlorophenol (2,5-DCP). It is important to note that 2,5-DCP is one of the most widely used pesticides on the globe.

Robert Sargis, MD, PhD, revealed his recent study findings at the Endocrine Society’s 94th Annual Meeting, stating that agricultural fungicide created insulin resistance in fat cells. The journal Diabetes Carepublished in 2011 that people with excess weight and high levels of organochlorine pesticides in their bodies had greater risk of becoming diabetic.

Parkinson’s Disease

Long-term exposure to herbicides and pesticides have been associated in over 60 studies with Parkinson’s. You don’t have to be a conventional farmer to be wary of these findings. Use natural methods to keep pests and weeds out of your home and garden today.

Infertility and Birth Defects

One of the most well-known negative effects of pesticides, infertility is continuously found to be a result of exposure to these agrochemicals. Atrazine—a weed killer used in agriculture as well as on golf courses and which has been found in tap water—may be partially responsible for climbing miscarriage and infertility rates. As for men, one 2006 study pinpointed chlorpyrifos with lowering testosterone levels. This pesticide is often found in strawberry fields and apple and peach orchards.

Other researchers tested roundup on mature male rats at a concentration range between 1 and 10,000 parts per million (ppm), and found that within 1 to 48 hours of exposure, testicular cells of the mature rats were either damaged or killed.

Avoid pesticides even if you’re already pregnant. These chemicals are responsible for causing various birth defects, too. A report revealed that the top selling herbicide Roundup disrupts male hormones due to the main active ingredient – glyphosate.

Autism

Admittedly, pesticides aren’t solely to blame for autism, but they may be a hefty part of the equation. Leading scientists are attributing the condition to genes and insecticides exposed to the mother while pregnant as well as to the child in early years. This is because many chemicals affect the neurology of bugs, inadvertently affecting the neurological function of children, too. A 2010 Harvard study blames organophosphate pesticides—found in children’s urine—to ADHD.

What is the best way to to avoid pesticide exposure and pesticides in food? Don’t use pesticides, and buy organic. Organic isn’t always easy or cheap, so keep in mind these updated dirty dozen fruits and vegetables to always buy organic (plus 15 cleaner foods you can afford to buy conventional). NASA has also suggested raising air purifying plants indoors to clear your home of indoor air pollution. Remember to remove pesticides from your home, too.

The Calorie Conspiracy

You Can't Make This Up, Jan. 11, 2012

The human organism is designed to be homeostatic (maintaining balance), not permitting obesity without a survival-related reason. If you are on a normal diet, and you overeat, you do not get fat. You excrete the excess calories. What constitutes a normal diet is determined by evolution (genetics) and not by politics, advertising, culture, dieticians, doctors or taste. Human evolution moved at a snail’s pace the past 100 000 years and our metabolism hasn’t adapted to the the agricultural age, which started around 4 000 years ago. Implying that a normal human diet consists mainly of fish and game, supplemented with berries, nuts, honey, grubs and roots. Most of the year this means mainly fat and protein. People are biologically-proven omnivores and archeologists say we have been hunters and fishermen through the ages.

The conspiracy is that medical doctors don’t tell us how fat storage works: All food is metabolized into simpler chemicals and when excessive carbohydrate intake raises the insulin level and this gets above a critical threshold, fat is deposited. Under influence of this hormone, those chemicals get assembled into lipids. Instead doctors tell us that because fat contains more energy per gram than carbohydrates, fat makes you fatter than carbs. Sounds reasonable, no?

They don’t know any better. Fat contains more calories than carbohydrates and protein only when you burn it in a calorimeter, not when you eat it. People have been shown to be a little bit more complex than calorimeters, and that is ignored by the currupt policy makers in the medical establishment. They have understood the carbohydrate/insulin priciple of weight gain for decades. Ordinary doctors are kept in the dark because Big Pharma publishes or sponsors corrupted course material, -research and high-profile public education programs on the menace of fat and the blessings of carbs.

Qui bono? The only corporate entity that greatly benefits from a morbidly obese population is Big Pharma. Most Western doctors are little more than Big Pharma’s glorified snake-oil salesmen.

Big Pharma needs us to be overweight to sell more expensive meds to lower cholesterol, keep diabetics on life-support and symptom-relieve the many obesity-related ailments. It’s all about shareholder payouts. Their goal is achieved by fooling folks into fattening eating habits, and Big Pharma’s loyal footsoldier – the family physician – can be relied on to ignore all scientific research, obey the dogma and tell you to eat more fattening carbs and less slimming fats. Big Pharma throws a lot of cash around, “educating” the public through government and media brainwashing on how “fat is bad”.

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What’s Making Us Fat? Researchers Put Food Additives On Suspect List

Common Health, Aug. 12, 2011

Consider this slide of ice cream ingredients that Dr. Barbara Corkey, director of the Obesity Research Center at Boston Medical Center, used in a recent lecture. The few elements in yellow, she told her listeners, were ingredients that we normally think of as “food.”

There was a collective gasp from her American Diabetes Association audience, and a buzz of distaste.

In pink, Barbara went on, were some of the substances she was about to discuss. “Virtually none of these non-food compounds have been carefully assessed for a potential causative or contributing role in the obesity and diabetes epidemic,” she said.

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MSG linked to weight gain

Reuters, May 27, 2011

Researchers found that people who eat more MSG are more likely to be overweight or obese. And the increased risk wasn't simply because people were stuffing themselves with MSG-rich foods. The link between high MSG intake and being overweight held even after accounting for the total number of calories people ate.

Ka He, a nutrition expert at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who led the study, said that although the risk of weight gain attributable to MSG was modest, the implications for public health are substantial. "Everybody eats it," He told Reuters Health.

MSG is one of the world's most widely used food additives. Although it tends to be more popular in Asian countries, Americans manage to get their share in processed foods, from chips to canned soups, even when it's not labeled as such.

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Related: What Foods To Avoid?

Dr. Blaylock: First Lady’s Plan Ignores Real Obesity Issues

KiowaCountySignal.com, Feb. 20, 2011

First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign, which attempts to reduce childhood obesity by encouraging kids, parents, schools, communities, and pediatricians to focus on healthier eating and exercise, diverts attention from the real cause of the U.S. obesity epidemic, says Dr. Russell Blaylock.

While a high-sugar, high-fat diet, and a lack of physical exercise contribute to the problem, the three main causes of widespread obesity are: consumption of massive amounts of excitotoxic food additives, such as MSG; low vitamin D3 levels; and the over-vaccination of children, says Blaylock, editor of The Blaylock Wellness Report.

“This is the major problem, but it’s being completely ignored despite extensive research in the area,” he says. "While [Michelle Obama's] goals are laudable, one must be careful that this is not just another massive spending program that will eventually be taken over by major food-based corporations and pharmaceutical companies, as we have seen in other areas of such 'governmental-private partnerships.'

"As soon as we accept [it], we will see mandatory vaccinations of every description, drugs being added to our water supply, and children forced to take dangerous psychotropic drugs and statins. I believe we should reject creating another massive federal agency and risk losing control of our own children."

Studies show that when fed to newborn animals, excitotoxic food additives like monosodium glutamate and soy extract, cause obesity by damaging the hypothalamus, an area of the brain that regulates weight, and the pancreas, which regulates blood-sugar levels, he says.

Studies show that low levels of vitamin D3 are correlated to weight regain, he says. And extensive research has shown that too many vaccinations results in immune over-stimulation in the pancreas, causing diabetes, obesity, and metabolic syndrome, a series of risk factors such as high blood pressure, insulin resistance, and high cholesterol.

“Contributing to this is thdie massive consumption also of high-fructose corn syrup, high-sugar diet, [and] lack of exercise,” he says.

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What's that in my food? — Hydrolyzed vegetable protein!

The Varsity, Jan. 11, 2011

You might not have heard of hydrolyzed vegetable protein, but you’ve surely heard of its villainous cousin, monosodium glutamate — or MSG — the culprit behind the so-called “Chinese restaurant syndrome.” The Japanese have been using MSG, derived from seaweed, for thousands of years, and it is the third most prevalent flavour enhancer in the world after salt and pepper.

MSG has been in the media for decades because of its associated side effects, including feelings of numbness, tingling, headaches, and heart palpitations. Though it is debatable, some believe it is neurotoxic — in other words, it may be poisonous to nerves and neurons.

In addition to these common criticisms, a 2008 study published in the journal Obesity illustrated that MSG may also be a contributor to obesity, due to its effects on leptin resistance.

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Related: Studies show MSG fed Mice became Grossly Obese